Lawmaker wants you to show yourself online

One of the great things about the internet is to be able to post on forums or leave comments somewhere yet remain completely anonymous. Well if one Kentucky lawmaker has his way, anonymous internet postings may be going the way of the buffalo.

Representative Tim Couch filed a bill this week to make anonymous posting online illegal. The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site. Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.

If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.

He says it will cut down on online bullying...but c'mon, isn't that half the fun of posting online?

Could $5 a month save the music industry?

The Songwriters Association of Canada proposes a $5 monthly fee on subscribers’ Internet bills that would make it legal to download music and hopefully save the failing music industry.

THE PROBLEM

Sales of CDs are down 20 per cent worldwide and 35 per cent in Canada, compared to 2006.

An estimated 1.6 billion music files are downloaded in Canada each year on "grey-market" peer-to-peer systems, representing $1.6 billion in lost revenue, using the iTunes price model of 99 cents per download.